The Internet facilitates the access of resources that are available on the world-wide-web. Many different types of services are available that provide access to the Internet. These services provide access to the Internet via various devices such as computers, mobile phones, etc. Mobile data services provide access to the Internet via mobile phones.
Mobile data services facilitate the access of Internet resources by mobile data service customers. Internet based resources that can be accessed by mobile data service customers via mobile data services include services such as world-wide-web services, email, VoIP, text messaging, etc. Mobile data services charge for the use of the services that they provide to mobile data service users.
Mobile data service billing schemes allow mobile data service providers to charge customers for the mobile data services that they use. The systems that facilitate customer billing are maintained by the mobile data service and can be accessed by authorized requestors from service nodes. Conventional mobile data services maintain systems for compiling billing records for its customers.
Charging profiles are used to determine how a particular service user is to be billed. Current charging profiles contain charging information that is based on details of the service that the particular service user is provided.
General Packet Radio Service/Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (GPRS/UMTS) is a mobile data service that is available to users of GSM mobile phones. GPRS/UMTS networks provide data transfer by using unused TDMA channels in the GSM network.
In GPRS/UMTS networks, charging records are generated based on charging profile parameters. The charging profiles are maintained at support nodes of the GPRS/UMTS network. Conventionally, charging profiles for mobile data service users are selected based on charging characteristics data maintained by the GPRS/UMTS network.
Conventional charging characteristics data only provide a limited number of charging profiles for billing purposes. It should be appreciated that the limited number of profiles that are supported by such schemes places a significant limitation on the capacity of mobile data service providers to adequately bill their customers. An additional limitation of conventional mobile data services is the inability to perform location based billing.
The drawings referred to in this description should not be understood as being drawn to scale except if specifically noted.